


Names

by ShapeShiftersandFire



Series: Daemons on Deck [3]
Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 15:59:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15585495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShapeShiftersandFire/pseuds/ShapeShiftersandFire
Summary: Miranda Keyes isn’t happy with her dæmon’s name, Nevermore, and searches for a better one.





	Names

Her mother called him Nevermore. She guessed it was after the Edgar Allen Poe poem, The Raven. After all, her mother’s dæmon was a raven, and it only seemed to follow the theme, whatever that may have been.

She called him Never, or Nev, for short. Nevermore was too long for her six-year-old mouth to pronounce, and it took too long to call him if she needed him. He liked the nickname better than his full name, anyhow. Even her mother called him Never. He was only addressed as Nevermore her mother’s daemon, or by her mother in the rare event that they got into trouble.

Her mother’s dæmon was called Avarice.

Miranda didn’t like him.

Avarice gave her chills. She got the sense that something dark and sinister beyond the understanding of a four-year-old girl hung over him like a cloud or a shawl. She was almost afraid of him, even though he had never given her a reason to be. He stayed perched on her mother’s shoulder, eyeing the world with an eerie calm.

He was quiet, almost too quiet, and on the occasions when he did drift down from Catherine’s shoulder to peck curiously at whatever Miranda happened to be playing with, Miranda sat there and stared at him until he flew back to his perch on her mother’s shoulder.

Her father’s daemon, on the other hand, was one Miranda had always preferred, a mighty, yet gentle elk called Thompson. He took to Nevermore as quickly as her father took to her. There was something calming about him, something much more welcoming and relaxed about him than Avarice.

Miranda loved him. So did Never.

He was friendly, much friendlier than Avarice had ever been, and unlike her mother’s dæmon, Thompson was a pleasure to be around. Nothing hung over him like Avarice. Miranda wanted him to be around, and of course, he was, because he had to be.

He let Never climb on him and lounge on his antlers. He sparred with Never, in the form of a young elk, in the backyard, until Never grew either tired or bored and flopped into the grass as a floppy-eared mutt.

“Are you alright, Nev?”

Never nodded, but Miranda felt the first spark of unhappiness within her daemon, something she had never felt before, and she didn’t forget it.

  


Nevermore settled when Miranda was in fifth grade, into the form of a yellow mongoose. He wound around her neck again and again, thrilled with his flexible settled form and his ability to lounge around her neck like a scarf.

But he was still unhappy. Miranda could feel it. It was that same spark of unhappiness she had felt that day in the backyard, stronger this time, and now in waves.

“What’s wrong, Never?” she asked one day while they sat on her bed.

“My name,” Nevermore sighed. “I don’t like it. It doesn’t feel…me.”

Miranda frowned, relieved. She’d had the same thought for some time now, she’d just never felt brave enough to say it. “I don’t like it either.”

Nevermore rested his head on his tiny paws, his face as unhappy as a mongoose’s face could be. And he stayed like that more sometime while Miranda did her homework, though she found she was distracted by Nevermore’s sulking.

Then Nevermore’s head jerked up, his eyes bright with sudden excitement and shining with the light of a new idea. “Can we change it?”

Miranda stared at him, startled. “Change what?”

“My name!” the mongoose yipped. “Let’s change my name, Miranda!”

With a grin nearly as long as Nevermore’s body, Miranda nodded in agreement.

Her father tried to help with Nevermore’s new name. He tried his damnedest, but his names continually fell short of Nevermore’s expectations. And it was certainly no help that the daemon had no particular kind of name in mind.

They tried for months to give Nevermore a new name, everything from old ships’ names to old one-word racehorse names and even old presidents’ names. They’d tried old cartoon characters, movie characters, song titles, even food. They tried whatever they could think of, but nothing ever fit for Nevermore.

They recruited Miranda’s school friends, who suggested various names they saw in books, authors and characters alike, but still nothing seemed to fit.

That was until Miranda was only a few months from finishing the seventh grade and had picked up a book from the library about the Spanish Civil War for her history class. The name on the cover was a pen name, she found in her research. It was the real name of the author was what caught Nevermore’s attention as he lounged across her shoulders while she sat at her desk and read the biography of Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell.

“That’s it!” Nevermore jumped up, startling Miranda.

“What’s it?”

Nevermore hopped down from her shoulder and rapidly tapped the last name “Blair.”

“This!” he chirped. “This is the name I want!”

Miranda blinked, looking the name over. “Are you sure?”

Nevermore nodded fervently.

Miranda grinned. “Alright. Blair it is.”

Blair chirped happily and wound himself around her neck.

  


They didn’t tell Mother at first what they’d done. They’d stopped speaking to her, gradually, as Miranda showed more and more interest in joining the military, while Catherine actively opposed the idea. Not out of malice, but motherly concern. Blair was clear-headed enough to see that while Miranda fumed silently. She wanted this. She wanted to join the UNSC. She wanted to be like her father.

It was part of the reason her last name now read “Keyes.”

When they did speak to Catherine, and it was rare, they let her call him Never, still, and it went on that way until the day Miranda signed up for the military academy. When her acceptance letter came in the mail, they were so excited to show Catherine they hadn’t realized Blair’s new name was printed on it, and the conversation, as so many before this, slowly devolved into something much less pleasant.

It started when realization set in as Catherine frowned, first in hurt at Miranda’s full name, then in mild confusion at something else on the page. At first, Miranda assumed it was because she’d gotten the letter in the first place; Catherine hadn’t wanted her to go, after all. Then Catherine blinked slowly, Avarice shuffled on her shoulder, and finally, she looked up at Miranda inquisitively.

Blair gripped Miranda’s shoulder.

“Miranda, who is Blair?”

Miranda blinked, confused, and not completely aware of her mother’s question.  “Blair?”

“Yes.” Catherine raised the data pad, flashing the digital copy of Miranda’s acceptance letter. “It lists ‘Blair’ as your daemon’s name instead of ‘Nevermore.’”

“Oh,” Miranda said in a small voice. Damn it. Her heart pounded in her chest. She wanted to lie, Oh, it was a mistake on the Academy’s part, but she couldn’t. Daemon names were checked and rechecked thoroughly. There was no mistaking one daemon’s name for another. And Catherine Halsey was no fool when it came to lies. She would know.

“Miranda,” Catherine said, in that stern, motherly tone she had come to dislike, “what did you do?”

Miranda looked up from her letter. Blair pressed closer to her. She inhaled, rounding her shoulders and feeling that familiar prick of irritation. “His name is Blair now.”

Avarice squawked, Blair hissed; Catherine silenced them both with a wave of her hand, though Blair stayed bristled. She stared at Miranda, not angry, Miranda didn’t think, but curious, and even a little hurt. Possibly disappointed.

“Why?”

“I--” Miranda stared at the paper. She’d imagined the day she had to tell Catherine about Blair’s name change, imagined herself confidently telling her mother that Blair’s former name didn’t fit him, but now that the moment had come she couldn’t bring herself to say it. She had to pause before she answered. “He didn’t feel that it fit. It didn’t feel like him. He wanted to change it.”

She didn’t tell her mother about the cloud over them, how they felt suffocated, trapped, by Blair’s old name. She didn’t tell her mother about the sense of relief, of freedom, after they formally changed Blair’s name.

It was the same sense of freedom and relief that she felt when she changed her last name, but she didn’t tell Catherine about that, either. She didn’t tell Catherine a lot of things.

The hurt became a little clearer in Catherine’s eyes. Avarice wilted, just a little. “And you let him?”

“Yes,” Miranda said, with venom. “He was unhappy, and it was bothering me. We had to.”

“Yes,” Catherine muttered, “A daemon’s feelings are often difficult to ignore…” While the statement didn’t appear to be directed toward anyone in particular, Miranda couldn’t help but feel it was partially aimed at her.

She sat back, crossing her arms. “Should I have ignored him, then?”

Blair nipped her ear. _Miranda, don’t. Please, I’m not in the mood._

_If she wasn’t like this--_

_Miranda, please!_

Miranda bit the inside of her lip. A daemon’s feelings couldn’t be ignored. How wise of her mother.

“No,” Catherine said. “Daemons are not to be ignored.” Her eyes flickered to Avarice, who gripped her shoulder with a little more resolve, and with Blair’s insight, Miranda came to the conclusion that it was aimed at both of them. She relaxed her arms.

“I named him after ‘The Raven,’” Catherine said offhandedly, no doubt looking for a subject change. How long it would remain civil was yet to be seen.

“I figured.”

Blair nipped her ear again in warning.

“I was hoping you’d keep it.”

Miranda bit her lip harder. _Just like you were hoping I’d keep your name._ She shrugged offhandedly. “It just wasn’t him. I couldn’t ignore that.” She threw her mother’s own words back in her face and watched with the slightest hint of guilt as Catherine flinched ever so slightly.

_Miranda!_

_I know, I know._

_Do you?_

She didn’t answer him. All Blair ever wanted was for her to have a pleasant conversation with Catherine, but she could never seem to do that.

“Of course,” Catherine said simply. The silence simmered between them after that, as Miranda wrestled with her irritation while simultaneously looking for something for either something to say or an excuse to get her off the line until Catherine looked down at the datapad with a deep frown. “This is official, then, yes?”

Miranda nodded. She’d made up her mind. Nothing her mother could do will change it.

“Promise me you’ll be careful, if nothing else?”

Before Miranda could answer with a burst of irritation, Blair’s muzzle rested by her ear; she could feel the twitch of his muzzle. _You promise her, Miranda._ She relaxed her shoulders and nodded with a glance at Blair, and answered with a touch of reluctance, “Yes, Mother, if nothing else.”

  
  


COMMANDER MIRANDA KEYES  
4.28.2525 - 12.11.2552   
BLAIR, YELLOW MONGOOSE

**Author's Note:**

> Daemons featured:  
> Miranda Keyes and Blair, yellow mongoose  
> Catherine Halsey and Avarice, raven  
> Jacob Keyes and Thompson, American elk


End file.
